


peregrine, cormorant, starling

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Dom/sub, Hurt/Comfort, I straight up Do Not know how to tag this one yall, Kneeling, M/M, Possessive Behavior, post-1x13, though a bit more abstract than usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: The sense of power is heady, an intoxicant. Alex thinks that maybe power like this shouldn’t be given to people like him. It goes too much to his head, to be a little like a god. It makes him think dangerous, ravenous, unkind things.





	peregrine, cormorant, starling

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is not for redistribution without my express permission.

Michael turns up on his doorstep with hollow eyes and empty hands, and Alex doesn’t ask where he’s been. Or where he’s going.

He bends his head for the blindfold; he opens his mouth for the gag. With a gentle touch to the small of his back, he falls perfectly to heel.

They don’t always have sex. In fact, they usually don’t, unless Michael won’t go down any other way. Alex just carves out a space for Michael to _be,_ and for Michael, Alex simply _is._ When there’s nothing in the world that’s right and no words that can make it better, there is no greater gift Alex can give.

But it’s not all Michael taking and Alex giving away. No.

Michael goes down to his knees, a creature of nothing but feeling and trembling, desperate submission, and

The fear in him spikes high and sharp enough Alex almost dreams he tastes it in the air, and

He makes these little wordless noises that come from an animal throat bobbing and buzzing under Alex’s fingertips, and

He can sit just still for hours one time he showed up at dawn and Alex managed to keep him safe and quiet and centered until the stars were out again and

And

No one ever, ever talks about how good it feels to have prey squirming in your teeth. It tastes like life and blood and control, having Michael between his thighs. It tastes like summer salt air on the roof of his mouth, like the coil of a muscle right before the spring.

Michael surrenders the storm inside him to a cliff and a lighthouse that can withstand every howling wind and every crashing wave, and Michael without the all the fury of the natural world in his head is as docile as any other helpless thing touched by an open hand instead of the teeth of a trap.

The sense of power is heady, an intoxicant. Alex thinks that maybe power like this shouldn’t be given to people like him. It goes too much to his head, to be a little like a god. It makes him think dangerous, ravenous, unkind things, like:

There are people who could disappear, like:

There are starships that could stay Earthbound, incomplete, like:

There are marks that could be left, renewable, or permanent, _ad infinitum,_ marks of ownership, marks of _territory,_ like:

There are bones that could be broken on people who had their chance to love this man, in records in systems nowhere strong enough to keep Alex out; there is no one who is safe enough; like:

If dead things on Michael’s doorstep were gifts that would keep him fed, then Alex has a hunter pacing his floors.

If Michael begged him, if he said one, single word, no lock would be enough to stop the beast that godhood made out of Alex Manes.

Alex only touches him with open hands and slow, steady strokes. Soothing both predator and prey. And that’s a power, too, controlling himself just as tightly, as wholly and innately, as Michael needs to be controlled. Like the burn of stretching after hours of waiting stillness, delicious and sore.

So Michael comes to Alex’s door beaten and dull and throbbing in Alex’s chest like an open wound. He’s got circles beneath his eyes that might as well be bruises. He’s got blood on his collar and a scab darkening the corner of his mouth.

So Alex puts him on his knees.

He goes down like his strings have been cut the moment Alex tells him where. Limp and pliant, he lets Alex position him, feet tucked just so so they don’t lose circulation, hands flat and still on the tops of his knees. When Alex sits on the couch and guides Michael’s head to his knee, a _whuff_ of breath punches out of his lungs and into the soft flannel stuffed in his mouth, and that’s the only sound he makes.

Some days, this is enough to make Michael liquid and drifting for hours. Some days, it’s nowhere near close, and he cries and keens for a firmer hand to pull and pin him into place. Today, it’s somewhere in between.

Michael, blind and mute and sparking like a stripped wire, pushes his face into Alex stomach, nuzzling and rubbing into the most solid part of him, every single motion _begging_ for something, anything, a rod to grind him to the earth. And Alex answers with all he is, with all he’s got, with every atom in his body that’s a positive charge, pulling Michael down from the sky. He wraps his hand in Michael’s curls; Michael’s curls wrap themselves around his fingers, silky and clinging and still slightly damp from the shower.

Alex saw, once, the handprint Max left on Liz’s chest, that shimmering, impossible mark, and he saw the results of the tests she ran—temperature readings, scrapings of skin. If the world were just, he could do the same, and leave the shape of himself burned into Michael, and it would connect them, complete them, and Michael would _know,_ in a way impossible to misunderstand, that Alex _owns_ him, and that Alex plays for keeps.

But the world doesn’t work that way. Alex works with the hands he’s got.

He holds Michael as tight as he needs, pressed into the meat of him until his breathing starts to stutter, then he lets him up, still close enough to flush against their shared body heat. Michael pants as Alex traces his fingertips around the shell of each ear, the wings of his brows, every beloved contour of that battered, beloved face.

Michael isn’t ready to talk. Alex, for all his power, has no way of knowing when he will be, and no way of forcing that day to come any sooner. But Alex can speak like this, and if it gives Michael _any_ solace, _any_ peace, it’s worth every single goddamn second.

Michael will leave again, shying away, dancing back to the safety of the underbrush. Instincts exist to keep animals alive in a world that wants them dead. A rabbit hides from the talons of a hawk. There’s no insult in it, no rank rebellion. Alex will drive Michael to Isobel’s, because those are two of his only three conditions Alex has put on this—this thing, this thing too frank and natural to have a name—one: that Alex leaves him at a soft landing, not stumbling away into the dark; two: that when Michael goes to ground he isn’t alone with his own thoughts to undo all of Alex’s good work.

The third condition goes unvoiced. It doesn’t need to be said.

Alex isn’t here to be another tool Michael uses to hurt himself. If he’s being made a little bit a god, he’s not the type that wields the whip and gets paid in penance. He isn’t here to be tinder to flint; he isn’t here to be fuse or accelerant or timer ticking down.

Michael doesn’t argue. He doesn’t provoke. Maybe if Alex let that happen, Michael would come around more often. But there are cycles that have to be ended, circles that need to be split. Alex rebuilt himself from the ground up from a faulty blueprint, but he’s done his remodeling and now all he’s got left is time and tools.

He can wait. He can gorge himself on the pieces of Michael he’s given; he can save the heart and the softest parts and make it through the winter.

Someday Michael will feel safe again, and Alex will be there, wheeling in the open air.

**Author's Note:**

> because i am impossibly pretentious, i couldnt possibly let yall leave without some Bird Facts
> 
> A cormorant is a predatory coastal bird. It features heavily in medieval heraldry, as well as in Scandinavian folklore. In particular, Norwegian tradition represents the cormorant as returning spirits of loved ones lost at sea.
> 
> The starling is a common songbird, an invasive species that has spread across the Americas with impunity after being brought on a colonial ship by a very shortsighted Shakespeare nerd. (It's also literally called 'starling' so yknow the implications of an invasive species that is nevertheless a defenseless songbird and literally has 'star' in its name...)
> 
> Peregrine, noun: the largest, fastest, and most deadly member of the Falconidae family. It can reach speeds of 240 mph in full dive, and it hunts and eats just about anything, including small mammals and other birds as large as ducks and crows.
> 
> Peregrine, adjective: wanderer.


End file.
